Effective Leadership is About Trust

by Casey Sisterson on April 24, 2010

Trust

Trust is an amazingly simple concept yet it is one of the hardest things to give to another person.  We have learned from our childhood only to trust those we really know and even then only if we’ve seen actions in the other individual that leads us to believe that trust is warranted.  But every day we are forced to place our trust in people whom we don’t know.  You trust the mechanic to fix your car correctly even if you don’t know them.  You trust your bank to properly handle your funds.  You trust that the person flying your airplane know what they are doing.  In all of those cases the trust is given because we believe we either have some other action we can take if our trust is breached and / or we trust the company that these people work for.

Now think about your team members.  Did you trust them right away like your mechanic, your banker, or your pilot?  No.  You likely did not.  Especially if you’ve not worked with them before.  We withhold our trust because we do not yet feel comfortable with our team mates and we don’t have the benefit of knowing that there is another action we can take if they fail.  In fact, if they fail we too are likely to fail.  From a professional standpoint, a failed trust relationship is worse than a messed up bank account or a fouled up car.   Okay, I’ll grant you that a crashed airplane has horrible implications but the point I’m trying to get across is that our trust is harder to earn when we believe that we will be personally affected by the outcome of the work of the other individual.

Trust on the personal level

If trust is so hard to give on a personal level why then is leadership all about trust?  It is due to a funny quirk of the human psychology.  People will not, cannot, perform to their fullest unless they are trusted.  This is because people will begin to second guess each decision that needs to be made.  That second guessing will cause them to slow down.  It will cause them to check with their lead to ensure that what they are doing is right.  A delay in their work is likely to occur as the leader may be in a meeting.

Beyond second guessing there is a deeper issue.  Pride.  A team member who is not trusted will not have pride in their work because they believe that it is someone else’s responsibility and decision to do the work.  They begin to feel like just another pair of hands instead of a full-fledged member of the team.   If people do not feel like they belong they will place themselves on auto-pilot and will become just another pair of hands.

You can see the effects of this happening when they stop adding constructive comments, when they become silent in meetings, and when they begin to stop caring about the project goals.  All are dangerous signs that the team member has disengaged.

It is important that you don’t let this happen.

You need to Trust but with a bit of Caution

Blind trust is also not necessary.  Just like not trusting someone, blind trust can also have disastrous consequences.  You need to understand each and every one of your team members and get a feel for just how much trust they need.  Some need complete trust and some don’t want that trust.

It is your job as a leader to determine what level of trust each team member needs and to give it to them.  Once you’ve determined the level of trust each person needs you can then determine what level of caution you need to apply.

Caution, in this instance, is simply getting your team to report on their progress.  Reports, daily scrum meetings, status meetings, or a casual walk around are just some of the methods you can use to check up on your team.

I like the scrum based meetings because you get a quick daily update without it being onerous and you find out what is holding people up, what is getting accomplished and what the next steps are.  You don’t have to be an agile project to make use of this method of project communication.

You have to give them to opportunity to fail

I describe leadership and trust to new project managers and leaders as ‘You have to give them the opportunity to fail’.  It is a backwards way of wording ‘you have to trust them to succeed’ but the first sentence responds to our own inner fear of what if they fail?

There are times when your experience screams that a task needs to be approached in a particular way.  If your team member decides that a different way is better and they have confidence in the way then you have to let them try.  Mind you, you ensure you explain why you are hesitant about the path and explain some of the road blocks that might affect them.  If they are still keen on taking a different approach than you would then you need to let them.  Just remind them that they are responsible for the success of the work.  This approach gets their complete buy in and makes them take on responsibility for the success of the task.  To be honest, most team members will put in the extra effort to prove themselves right.  And at the end of the day you shouldn’t care too much about the path taken but focus instead on the goal that was achieved.

With trust you will achieve your goals, but perhaps not in the same path that you would have originally thought.  And achieving one’s goals is what effective leadership is all about.

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True Teamwork Transcends Roles

by Casey Sisterson on April 21, 2010

Team Work

When a project kicks off everyone on the project team is typically assigned a role and a set of project responsibilities.  The responsibilities are usually defined at a fairly high level.

Statements like ‘Responsible for the business process analysis of the project’ or ‘responsible for leading the development team’ are typically listed.

Making Grandma’s Famous Cookies

Poor leaders believe that defining roles and responsibilities and having a kick-off meeting is what it takes to make a team.  These types of  leaders simply do not understand why their team does not come together.  Attempting to create your team this way is like throwing all of the ingredients for your grandma’s favorite cookies into a big bowl and wondering where those great cookies you remember are.

Roles, responsibilities and kick-off meetings are good ingredients but they do not make up the whole recipe.

Just like a chef, a good leader realizes that they must work to put the ingredients together in the correct order as well as having knowledge of how to prepare those ingredients such that they create the correct dish.

Don’t get me wrong, documenting the roles and responsibilities at the project start along with having a kick-off meeting to ensure that everyone understands the goals of the project are key to the success of any project.  I’ve seen too many projects that are a month or two in and have multiple people either working on the same thing while ignoring other important tasks because the roles and responsibilities are not defined.

Teams Gone Wild

The best example I saw of this was on an application development project which involved both contract workers and employees.  The project manager didn’t notice for whole month that an employee was madly removing code from one portion of the application while the contract worker was madly trying to add the code in.  It came to light when there was a team status meeting and both were complaining on how complex the problem was and that the code seemed to disappear / reappear as if by magic.  Both thought that they were responsible for the technical architecture, one thinking a feature was needed (contract worker) and one thinking it was not needed (employee).

Two person-months wasted because they did not understand their roles on the project.  Add the fact that they obviously were not acting like a team and openly communicating about what they were working on screamed that the project manager was not doing their job.  I was brought in to help save the project but recommended that the project be stopped.  It was.  A new reformed project went on to a stunning success.

The Phases of a Team

So how do you avoid this type of thing from happening?  You need to create a true team.  It is your job as a leader to ensure that you foster team work.  To foster team work you need to know how groups of people transform into teams.  The probability of a team forming by accident is quite low so you have to understand the process if you want to be successful.  The following are the phases of team development and how a team reacts during those phases.  I’ll save the actual how to for later posts.

A Group of People

When a project is kicked off everyone is given the common goal and told to go forth and be successful.  Everyone is inquisitive and eager.  But nobody is really committed to the project just yet.   There is no personal buy-in.  Everyone needs to understand their role, what the project will give them, and whether they believe the end goal is both realistic and interesting.

Dissension in the Ranks

Everyone has had time to mull over the goal and has their opinion on how to achieve that goal.  This is the critical phase of the project for team building.  Many teams never get past this phase.  A successful leader realizes that conflict is good and that conflict is necessary part of building a team.  It is your job to harness the conflict and direct it to the desired outcome.

Trust Forms

Your team now trusts each other to do their respective tasks.  Your team has now bought into the projects goals.  Everyone agrees on the route to success, that the project can be  a success, and that they want to be a part of that success.  Your team begins to meet outside of the project as a group and is ready for what the project throws at them.

Role Transcendence

The ultimate phase of team building.  Gone are the specific roles that everyone has to do.  The team focuses on the issues at hand and each person will contribute based upon their personal experiences.  What I mean by this is that you may have a developer agreeing to tackle an issue normally dealt with by a business analyst because s/he has time to do so.   Nobody is threatened by this and the team just nods and moves onto the next issue.  These teams also tend to create lasting friendships.  I remember many a late night with a core team around an office table, relaxed, and talking about how to solve issues which would have freaked us out at the start of the project.  I can count on my fingers the number of times that a true team has formed and that I was a part of.  The core team typically is formed by just the leads of the project so don’t assume that the whole team has to be at this level.

When you reach the phase of Role Transcendence a project team can accomplish anything.  No roadblock is too big.  No task too small.  And it is your job as a leader to create a team that can get through the various phases of team work and achieve your project goals.  You need to be the master chef who understands the dynamics of each ingredient and how it needs to be added to the whole to create your dish, or in this case, your grandma’s cookies.

The reward for your hard work is guaranteed project success.  Even better than just succeeding, the teams and the projects which reach this phase will stay with you forever.

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A Leader Must See the Trees in the Forest

April 15, 2010
How to Define Leadership | A Leader Must See The Trees in the Forest

When you look at a forest it is very easy to fall into the trap of thinking each tree is not unique but is the same as every other tree.  Sometimes the forest hides the little things that make a tree unique.  I remember, as a child, standing in the middle of a thick forest.  [...]

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